Quentin Tarantino Attempts to Clarify His Treatment of Uma Thurman, the 'Kill Bill' Crash, and Weinstein

Over the weekend actress Uma Thurman alleged via The New York Times that not only was she assaulted by Hollywood mega-producer Harvey Weinstein but that she also suffered serious injuries during a stunt crash on the set of Kill Bill that director Quentin Tarantino forced her to take part in. Though she said in a subsequent Instagram post that Tarantino was "deeply regretful," there's been fair amount of outrage focused on the director's behavior toward his lead actress.

Now Tarantino is speaking out in an interview with Deadline. The 54-year-old says he's long been aware that the Times piece was forthcoming and that he was supposed to speak with the story's writer, Maureen Dowd, to back up Thurman's claims, but that they "never hooked up." Here are some highlights from the interview.

On the Kill Bill crash:

As for the crash itself, he says he was happy that they found the footage in storage and that he was able to give it to Thurman—though he claims nobody knows what caused the incident in the first place. He denies screaming in anger at Thurman to do the scene, which he did not consider a stunt.

"But I’m sure I wasn’t in a rage and I wasn’t livid. I didn’t go barging into Uma’s trailer, screaming at her to get into the car. I can imagine maybe rolling my eyes and thinking, we spent all this money taking this stick-shift Karmann Ghia [sports car] and changing the transmission, just for this shot. Anyone who knows Uma knows that going into her trailer, and screaming at her to do something is not the way to get her to do something. That’s a bad tactic, and I’d been shooting the movie with her for an entire year by this time. I would never react to her this way."

He does admit some wrongdoing, however: "I told her it would be OK. I told her the road was a straight line. I told her it would be safe. And it wasn’t. I was wrong. I didn’t force her into the car. She got into it because she trusted me. And she believed me…. It was heartbreaking. Beyond one of the biggest regrets of my career, it is one of the biggest regrets of my life. For a myriad of reasons."

In the aftermath, Tarantino says he had no idea that Thurman was not being allowed by Weinstein to see the footage, as she alleges—in order to keep her from suing. "I can only imagine that was Harvey’s mind-set on it," Tarantino says. He called finding the footage a "herculean task" but that he knew Thurman could "share it with the world."

On Harvey Weinstein:

In the Times piece, Thurman alleges that Weinstein forced himself on her. Tarantino says that when his then-girlfriend Mira Sorvino told him about the producer's behavior toward her, he was able to write it off.

"I was horrified for [Mira] and frankly embarrassed for him, that he had to make desperate moves like that. Me and Mira became boyfriend and girlfriend and he backed off, all the way. I figured he was having a big crush on Mira." He says that when Thurman told him Weinstein did the same thing to her he "realized there was a pattern, in Harvey's luring and pushing attacks."

"In the Maureen Dowd article it says, that is when Quentin confronted Harvey? Well, my confrontation was saying, you have to go to Uma. This happened. You have to apologize to her and she has to accept your apology, if we’re going to do Kill Bill together."

Tarantino says he confronted Weinstein in "insistent tones" and didn't believe his denials because "there wasn’t another side to this story. There was this story…. I knew he was lying, that everything Uma was saying, was the truth. When he tried to wriggle out of it, and how things actually happened, I never bought his story. I said, I don’t believe you. I believe her." He says he was not there when Weinstein apologized to Thurman.

Addressing his own actions (or inactions), Tarantino expresses some regret: "I’ve already dealt with my…complacency…in chalking it up to this harmless form of…for some reason that now feels wrong. Back in 1999 it was easier to chalk up what he was doing, to this midsixties, Mad Men, Bewitched era of an executive chasing the secretary around the desk. Now, it’s like…as if that was ever OK! One of the things that has happened in this whole thing is there is a lot of staring in the mirror. And thinking about, how did you think about things during that time? What did you do in that time? What was your feeling about things, at that time? I remember when Mira told me about the time Harvey tried to get up in her apartment. I remember being shocked and appalled and that that was going on in today’s Hollywood. The big question I keep asking myself is, when did that shock go away?"

On his own on-set behavior:

Another aspect of Thurman's story that's drawn criticism is Tarantino's alleged behavior, specifically spitting on her and choking her. He believes that because there are not "quotes around that," this part of the story did not come from Thurman herself. "If you notice, all that choking and spitting stuff is not in quotes from Uma. It’s part of Maureen Dowd’s prose. For some reason there is a lot of hay being made out of this. Which I don’t understand, at all. You’ve seen movies where somebody spits in somebody’s face?" But it would seem that he also doesn't see anything wrong with the behavior. He tells Deadline, "A scene where somebody spits in somebody’s face. I can explain why I did exactly what I did, but my question is What’s the f-cking problem?"

And the choking? He says that was partly Thurman's idea and all in the name of getting the scene right: "To just wrap the thing around her neck, and choke her. Not forever, not for a long time. But it’s not going to look right. I can act all strangle-y, but if you want my face to get red and the tears to come to my eye, then you kind of need to choke me. I was the one on the other end of the chain and we kind of only did it for the close ups. And we pulled it off. Now that was her idea." He says that he would "ask a guy the same thing."

Tarantino says he's not trying to dive too deeply into the conversation and criticism of the past few days. "I kind of agree with that narrative [of male auteurs being out of control], except I didn’t feel I was guilty of it…. You can never judge the first response, which will be yeas and nays and then maybe it calms down. But I feel like I’ve been honest here and told the truth, and it feels really good after two days of misrepresentation, to be able to say it out loud. Whatever comes of it, I’ve said my piece. I’ve got big shoulders and I can handle it."